Thursday, May 24, 2007

Alternate Historian's Note: OK, folks. We're experiencing joys of computing that are oddly reminiscent of the founding days of TIAH – whose 3rd anniversary we celebrate THIS Sunday! We're putting up a double post tonight in case there's no Internet tomorrow. But, this Sunday, you've got to help us! Please send in your alternate versions of the Academy's beginnings (May 27th, 2004 was the date in this timeline). You can even use the fact that we lost the original day and had to restart on the 28th – whatever you can think of to provide a twist to our start. Send 'em in, and we'll print 'em! Be sure to tell us how you want your credit for the post to appear, as well as any links you want to be connected with your entry. Thanks for reading and get researching those alternate timelines! And, just as an addendum – if we don't get any entries, we're going to consider printing some of our more interesting emails and comments...

in 1891, the first trains full of Union soldiers pull into the train station at Hebron, Nebraska, where they are met by Major Mark Wainwright and prepared for the march down to the fort at Concordia, Kansas. “You're about to enter hostile territory, fellows,” he warns them, “so, keep your wits about you and maybe you'll live through this. Let your guard down, and these Kansans'll have no hesitation about making you pay for it. Believe me – I've lost more men than you'll ever know on this campaign.” With a slight catch in his throat, he concludes, “You're going to help me end it.”

in 1999, in a private audience with King Arthur II and Queen Gwen of Great Britain, Sir Lance du Lac implores the monarchs to accept the offers coming in from several former Central European Empire vassal states. “They only wish to chart their own courses now, to have the freedom that we enjoy,” he says. “They are willing to lay down arms against us and turn over any CEE imperial representatives that are seeking refuge in their countries.” King Arthur mulls over the proposal. “It does sound like an ideal way to preserve our forces for those nations that are unwilling to be freed. However,” he continues, much to Queen Gwen's consternation, “we should be cautious about this. Accept the offer from the Hungarians, but let us keep prosecuting the war on all other fronts. Once we see if the Hungarians are behaving themselves, then we shall consider the offers from the other nations.”

In 1941, the wizard Cadellin took Colin and Susan to the caves of Fundindelve. Using Susan's bracelet, the Weirdstone of Brisingamen he roused the band of Knights that slept until the hour when they must rise and fight. Charging into the night, they they prepare to confront the German invaders to the North.

~ variant from Steve Payne: extensive use of original content has been made to celebrate the author's genius.

In 2004,Foresight War author Anthony G Williams woke up one morning to find himself in 1914. Williams was confronted with the fictional dilemma he had postulated for twenty years hence - what changes could be wrought to save lives? And what if a counter-part had also been sent to Imperial Germany?

~ variant from Steve Payne: extensive use of original content has been made to celebrate the author's genius.

Coleridge

In 1947, Senator McCarthy expanded upon his explanation of the Dunkirk evacuation. The price paid by Montgomery was his glamour, left behind in the dunes inside a bottle owned by the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Coleridge, explained McCarthy, was a 'giant among dwarfs'. The orthodox wisdom was as follows: around 1796, ..

.. Coleridge started using opium as a pain reliever. His and Dorothy Wordsworth's notebooks record that he suffered from a variety of medical complaints, including toothache and facial neuralgia. There appears to have been no stigma associated with taking opium then, but also little understanding of the physiological or psychological aspects of addiction. It was not true, in 1796, the bottle had come into the possession of Coleridge, who had then written his most powerful poems. Or in fact, not so much poems, as incantations. Spells, to be blunt.

In 1989, the British Royal household and key advisers departed London by helicopter. The travel plan including accommodation at the Grand Hotel, Brighton. There the Stuarts would meet with Peter Tatchell and members of the Republication protest leadership. Make a British compromise and end the current crisis. And then renege ..

Grand Hotel Bri..

.. on the commitments when the protest had quietened down. That was the Royal plan. Events turned out somewhat differently to the plan, shall we say.

In 2001, she knew the child had changed everything. A jet-set young couple could drift ..

.. in and out of a sea-coast town like Eilat, unnoticed. But a child brought a pressing urgency, drew your focus elsewhere. Even in the hotel lobby of the Queen of Sheeba, the child had drawn attention where previously they had been invisible. Well, almost invisible. And yet the series of events that had brought the huntress to Eilat had been triggered by the child. Soon, events would change everything. Also because of the child.

In 1626, the third director-general of New Netherlands, Peter Minuit bought the Island of Manna-hata (Manhattan) from a Metoac tribe known as the Canarsee in exchange for trade goods valued at 60 guilders. Into his possession fell the strange being, the thousand year old Lenape soothsayer who would later predict the course ..

Lenape Nation

.. of modern history to strategic planners in the US Government. This long period of service ended with explosion of booby-trapped extra-terrestrial technology in a US base in Nevada in 2008.

in 1891, General Theodore Monteith faces off against an exploratory force of Kansans testing the new defenses at the Concordia fort. He bests them easily, but sends word north to Major Mark Wainwright to hurry reinforcements down from Hebron in case the Kansans try to take back their fort again. Major Wainwright immediately assembles his best 2000 men and heads south to aid his commanding officer.

in 1977, the cult film A New Hope opens in US theaters to general critical disappointment. Twentieth Century Fox, the studio that finally gave filmmaker Luke Walton the green light to make his space opera is pleased to find out that the public doesn't share the critics' opinions, and the movie makes a reasonable $50 million in its theatrical release. A few years later, though, it enjoys a second life as it becomes a hugely popular rental at video stores across the English-speaking world. It earns enough, in fact, for Walton to film 2 sequels to the campy original, fleshing out his story of a young man's fight against an evil that turns out to be closer to him than he originally thought. These direct-to-video sequels brought Walton enough money to retire on, although there are persistent rumors that he still plans to do something more with the Darth Vader character someday.

in 1999, Queen Gwen of Great Britain tries to convince her husband, King Arthur II, to give quarter to more of the Central European Empire's former vassal states. “Mercy to them now would show them what a wise and kind ruler you can be,” she tells him. When she sees that this line of argument isn't persuading him, she tries another tack. “Wouldn't Merl tell you to pursue peace if it was offered? Wouldn't he have seen the wisdom of saving your resources to battle those who actually mean to fight back?” This finally sways him, and he instructs his Prime Minister, Kay Ector, to begin negotiations with the CEE nations that are willing to surrender to the United Kingdom.

In 1940, UK War Leader Winston Churchill delivered his final radio broadcast before fleeing to the Falkland Islands with the remnants of the British Navy. His last words to the defeated British nation were a fragment of W.B. Yeats' poem The Second Coming

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,The blood-dimmed tide is loosed,The darkness drops again; but now I knowThat twenty centuries of stony sleep were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

~ variant from Steve Payne: extensive use of original content has been made to celebrate the author's genius.

In 1914,Foresight War author Anthony G Williams gained access to the Rector of Imperial College by presenting a 2002 pound coin to the doorman. Having explained his accidental time travel from 2004, and moving into detail on his plans, the Rector realised they were speaking at cross-purposes. Yes war was expected to break out at any moment, but the threat posed to world peace was mis-stated by Williams. An attack from the megalomaniac Emperor Napoleon V was imminent!

~ variant from Steve Payne: extensive use of original content has been made to celebrate the author's genius.

Guderian

In 1947, Senator McCarthy explained Montgomery's error. In exchanging his glamour for the safe passage of 338,000 Allied troops, few could argue that anything other than an honourable trade had occurred But by giving Guderian his glamour inside Coleridge's vial, he had inadvertently given the Nazis a super-weapon. And the ..

.. result was 1 May 1944, Disaster Day. Guderian had invoked the incantation of Kubla Khan to trap the Allied invasion force inside the Caves of Ice. Case closed announced McCarthy, hoping to wrap up the session early. His plans for the afternoon were routine, he intended to disappear inside a bottle of bourbon. Not yet sir! shouted General Dwight David Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force, what of our men? what of Hamelin? Immediately General Hans Guderian slammed the desk with his fist in a fury and shouted at Eisenhower in incomprehensible and guttural German.

In 1989, Patrick Magee, then aged 38 left Brighton by car. He had stayed in the Grand Hotel hotel under the false name of Roy Walsh two weeks prior to the conference and planted the bomb, with a long-delay timer, in his room, number 629. Following his release Magee was reported to have said 'I stand by what I did,' inflaming ..

Patrick Magee

.. the anger of survivors and the bereaved towards him. Whilst he admitted partial responsibility for planning the attack, he maintains that the fingerprint evidence found on a registration card recovered from the hotel was faked : 'If that was my fingerprint I did not put it there,' he said in a newspaper interview after his release. He has since indicated that he did not act alone at Brighton. He continues to defend his role in the blast, but he has expressed remorse for the loss of innocent lives. One of the victims of the bombing was Sir Anthony Berry, whose daughter, Jo Tufnell, publicly met with Magee shortly after the GFA, and expressed her forgiveness in an effort at achieving reconciliation as envisioned in the wake of the Good Friday Agreement with the Undefeated Irish Republican Army (UIRA).

In 2001, the lovers slipped discretely through the lobby of the Queen of Sheen Hilton Hotel in Eilat. The face of the huntress was covered by a scarf as if to protect her light European skin from the ruthless sun. It was prime check-out time and the hotel was buzzing. Distressed, the child says “Mummy, my bear”. Her concentration ..

.. interrupted, the huntress turns around. Distracted for a brief moment, the scarf falls and her eyes drop down to the furry toy on the lobby floor. As she looks up her eyes meet his. She has been recognised.

In 1953, on this day at the Nevada Test Site, the United States conducted its first and only nuclear artillery test. On June 2, 2006, the site was scheduled to be used to conduct the testing of a 700-ton conventional bomb in an operation known as Divine Strake, an alternative to nuclear bunker busters, which Congress has ..

Nevada Test Sit..

.. been reluctant to fund, despite support from President Bush. The 700-ton bomb was used by agents of the Alliance to booby-trap extra-terrestrial technology in the US base in Nevada in 2008, leading to the deaths of the President, his father and the thousand year old Lenape soothsayer.

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